Chapter Text
Victoria peered through her sniper scope, aiming at the forest clearing across the valley, and fired. A bright pink can flew through the air and landed somewhere on the forest floor. She lowered her weapon, frowning. Damn, she thought, missed the target by a hair. The can was supposed to have burst apart, but instead she must have just grazed it.
47 fired off three rounds beside her in rapid succession, hitting every single mark. She swore and picked up the Sharpie beside her, tallying up points for him and deducting points from her own total.
It was part of their routine these days, to train together whenever they were both in between missions. Victoria used to hate being dragged around by 47, frustrated by the rigor of his strict training. Now that she was a fully-fledged field agent of her own, she had come to appreciate all the guidance that her mentor offered her. She enjoyed the quiet time they spent together. It was a uniquely twisted father-daughter bonding that she was sure no one else had. Today, however, she was growing increasingly frustrated at her low hit rate.
“You’re off today,” he said, matter-of-fact. She groaned. He was right, of course: she was off. But she didn’t need him to point it out. She remembered there was a time she used to talk 47’s ear off because she was terrified of sitting in silence with him. Now that she was older, he was more willing to engage in her conversations just as she had learned to enjoy his quiet. She sometimes wished he would stay quiet though…
“It’s really nothing,” she said, wiping her brow with a leathered hand. She rolled up the sleeves on her mock turtle neck, the crisp cool April air feeling good on her skin. “I just have something on my mind.” She squatted back into position, adjusting her scope.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No, that’s okay. I already talked to Diana about it.”
“Alright,” he replied, “well, if you aren’t going to tell me about it then stop wasting bullets.”
Victoria winced. She had learned to not take any offense by his brusque comments, but it still stung. They each fired off another six rounds, and she tallied up another handful of points, noting with dismay at the widening spread between them.
“Agent Flare has been in the spotlight lately,” 47 said, reloading his sniper. “I read up on the latest case file. Good work.” Victoria pursed her lips and held back a grin, not wanting to seem too eager. Flare was the chosen codename Victoria had taken when she had passed the Initiate program. She was given a few simple assignments when an interesting case arrived on her handler’s desk in which the client had specifically asked that a young woman fulfill. Despite her lack of experience, the contract went off with extreme success, the Board themselves giving her high praise. Victoria was quickly developing a reputation as a first-rate seductress and vamp—a very specific classification of assassin and one that Victoria enjoyed very much.
Still, hearing affirmation from her mentor meant more to her than any Board approval.
“How’s the black eye?” 47 asked, pulling her out of her reverie. She frowned at that question. How typical of him to give her a compliment and a critique in almost the same breath.
“Fine,” she grumbled. Of course, being a first-rate seductress came with its own unique set of occupational hazards. She patted around her eye gingerly. It was still tender to the touch, but thankfully Victoria’s unique biology meant that it would heal on its own given another day or two. Most of the ugly swelling and bruising just looked like a weird yellow birthmark.
“Diana didn’t seem to think it was fine yesterday,” he said, which annoyed Victoria further. Of course he was bringing it up now because Diana had said something to him earlier. 47 hadn’t seen the worst of the injury, but in truth it was looking much better than it had the day before when Diana had picked her up from Heathrow.
Victoria would never admit this to Diana—who had freaked out when she first saw it—but she had her own self to blame for that injury. The client had warned in the mission briefing that the target was known for domestic violence—violence which had led to the death of his mistress and had in turn spurred on the late-mistress’ extremely wealthy father to hire an assassin to take care of the problem permanently.
“Don’t you go ragging on me, too,” Victoria replied.
“Diana cares about you.”
“I know, I know, she’s constantly reminding me she didn’t want me in this life to begin with. I just…”
“Just what?” he prompted, when she said nothing after trailing off into silence.
“It’s nothing. Thanks for asking about it, it’s fine,” she said curtly. She fired off another six rounds and swore when she missed all six.
“You’re getting worse,” 47 said, pointing out the obvious.
“Thanks,” she replied sarcastically.
“Is this really about the black eye or is there something else going on?”
Victoria felt her face go hot, knowing this was bound to come up eventually. She had been dodging this conversation with 47 while knowing full well he was probably the only person who would understand. They sat and sniped in silence for a few more rounds before Victoria blurted out something she immediately regretted: “It’s, uhh…I’m having boy troubles, I guess?”
47 fired a shot that completely missed the mark—his first miss of the day. “Boyfriend troubles? I wasn’t aware you had a boyfriend—”
“—I don’t! It’s not boy-friend troubles, just boy troubles,” she corrected.
“Victoria,” 47 said in a warning tone. She knew how much he disliked her beating around the bush. She growled, frustrated. She shot another couple rounds, hitting some cans clumsily.
She took a deep sigh before admitting her predicament: “I am frustrated that I am going down a path that is just going to disappoint Diana more and more. And I don’t want to disappoint her.”
“You’re not a disappointment to Diana.”
“Well, I feel like I am.”
“What does this have to do with boy troubles?”
“I just feel like if I liked boys, I would be able to have a normal life, but I don’t like boys so I’m never going to be able to do the things that normal girls do.”
47 lowered his scope and blinked slowly, processing the information. “…do you like girls?” he asked awkwardly. Victoria facepalmed herself. “Because that shouldn’t stop you from having a normal life either.” Victoria wanted to die. This was exactly why she had been avoiding this conversation with him.
“That is not the point,” she said frantically.
“But do you?”
“Noo!”
“Then what is the point? I’m a little lost.”
Victoria couldn’t answer him. She wanted to answer him, but once again felt like she didn’t know where to begin. She could see from her periphery that he was staring at her. His icy stare and blank expression revealed nothing about what he was thinking. He looked up at the overcast sky and noted the time on his watch. It was still early enough in the day to keep going for at least few more hours.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s set up at a second vantage point. Talk to me when we get there.”
They packed up their snipers neatly into their designated over-the-shoulder carrying cases and ziplined down the mountain side. 47 dismounted elegantly. Victoria underestimated her momentum and almost tumbled into a tree upon dismount. She was grateful he didn’t critique her bad form as he was sometimes prone to do when she swore he was intentionally trying to be annoying. Together, they worked around the mountainside, picking battered up brightly colored cans that were once targets.
Victoria loved the art of sniping. It was elegant and sexy and very satisfying when it all played out seamlessly. But sniping practice? Sniping practice was honestly the worst. Just the set up alone was tedious work. Between painting targets offsite, arranging the targets in the designated terrain, climbing up to a high vantage point, and then cleaning up after themselves, they could be working from dawn to dusk with little respite in between. 47 wasn’t fond of taking breaks either—he said it was unrealistic to expect a break in a real stakeout—so she often had to improvise with sneaking a quick bathroom break when he wasn’t hovering or eating whatever snacks fit in her pockets.
She pulled out a granola bar now, munching on it as she picked up another piece of trash that they created and tossed it into her duffel. 47 approached her from behind, his backpack full of empty cans jangling around noisily. He didn’t say anything, but she could tell by the way he cocked his head sideways that he was asking if she was ready to go. She nodded, her mouth full of granola, her head buzzing with disordered thoughts.
They hiked in silence, following along the River Rheidol. The Welsh valley stretched out before them, lush and expansive. They headed for another site that 47 had set up long before she had ever joined him. She often wondered how he set up these camps. She assumed that he must have used this mountain range as personal training grounds for years and set up the ziplines himself. Still, to do so away from the prying eyes of tourists was a mystery to her. He was a man of many odd talents.
When they reached another zipline base, he said: “Stick to a quarter mile radius,” and walked off into the forest clearing on his own. She worked to place cans all around her, climbing trees, sneaking them in bushes, and hopping across a creek. They regrouped after they each finished placing their empty cans around the clearing and hooked themselves to the pulley. They hoisted themselves up the zipline, working against gravity to make it to the summit. It was an exhausting exercise. She always dismounted panting heavily. 47 seemed completely unfazed, as though he could have climbed up a second mountain with both of their packs and still been fine.
“Eight rounds, forty-eight targets. Make them count,” he said, unpacking his gun. She nodded, removing her ziplining gloves and buckling on her regulation leather gloves. Finally, they could get around to the fun part: shooting.
They both fired off a round in silence, Victoria keeping score diligently.
“You’re not a disappointment,” he said when she went to reload.
Her lips twitched sideways. “Well, she loves to nag about everything I do lately,” Victoria snapped. “I come home with a blackeye and she lectures me on how you would have avoided the confrontation in the first place. The case file comes back in on how I seduced some prick and she has to pick a fight with me questioning my methods.”
47 said nothing, letting her blow off steam.
“I mean, c’mon,” Victoria continued, “she’s never even been out on the field before, she has no idea what it’s like!”
47 frowned at that. “I wouldn’t say that’s true.”
Victoria rolled her eyes. “Oh please, like being an undercover nurse for a little while is really all that hard.”
“You don’t think that’s field work?”
Victoria didn’t want to say what she was thinking, knowing 47 would reproach her.
“Being a double agent is dangerous. She could have been killed.” Victoria sighed, shaking her head. He always took her side. Always. “You should really give her more credit. Besides, I’m not really sure what all this has to do with boy troubles,” he said.
“What?”
47 cocked an eyebrow at her. “Boy troubles? You were saying earlier—”
“—Oh, right, that…” She let out another deep sigh, then said: “Okay, you have to promise me you’ll just listen.”
47 gave her a look as if to say he was offended she was implying he was a bad listener.
“Oh, don’t give me that, 47! It’s one snarky comment after another with you!”
He turned back to his scope and fired six more perfect shots. “If you promise to get to your point, I promise to listen,” he grumbled.
Victoria fired six shots, most of them shaky at best. “Okay, okay…” She considered what the straightest line through the story was, knowing it probably wasn’t going to be snappy enough for 47 regardless. “When Diana first brought me to London to live with her,” she began, “she thought the best thing for me was to go to school. Y’know…to make friends my own age, I guess.”
“I remember,” 47 replied, checking his scope. “You tested above your class. The headmaster wanted you to enroll into a more advanced grade, but Diana insisted she wanted you to start as a freshman.” Victoria looked at 47, blinking. She was surprised he already knew all of this. He looked at her when she didn’t continue with her story. “Diana kept me up to date. Remember the suspension for the fish tank incident?”
Her cheeks singed pink. “You know about that?” Victoria had accidentally shattered and destroyed the giant saltwater tank that was the pride of the science department. She had effectively killed all the sea life, not to mention the amount of water damage caused from all flooding. All for a stupid dare. Suffice to say: Diana had not been pleased.
“I know plenty.” He took another shot, neon green can whizzing to the ground. “You were very popular,” he recalled.
“Was I?” Victoria scoffed, doubtful.
“I think I remember Diana fretting over what to do when you got invited to your first party.”
Victoria let out a laugh. “Oh my gosh, I forgot about that! She almost didn’t let me go. Wonder what made her change her mind at the last minute…”
“Oh, well, I told her she should let you go.”
Victoria watched as 47 reloaded another cartridge, her expression of clear surprise. She blushed happily, grateful to know that he had sometimes been in her back corner after all. “Thanks,” she said appreciatively.
He shrugged, concentrating on another shot. He slowly squeezed the trigger.
“Well, anyway… I ended up losing my virginity at that party.”
47 missed his mark entirely, his bullet hitting a tree branch to the left of the can and startling a flock of birds. He turned bright red, clearly dismayed that his “cool parent” advice came back to haunt him years later.
“I-I see… That’s—”
“Nononono—I didn’t mean it to come out like that!” Victoria said frantically. “This all has a point, I promise!”
“Then get to it.”
“I, uhh…” she started again, “I didn’t really have fun. With the sex. I didn’t have fun having sex. So when I tried again I still didn’t have any fun and then I thought well maybe I’m gay…”
“If the point of all this is to come out of the closet, Victoria, there are other ways of telling me without us having to walk through your sex life from start to finish.”
“Jesus Christ, 47…” She felt her face grow very hot, and glanced over at him to see he was also embarrassed.
She heard him sigh. “I can listen, I promise. You have a point you’re trying to make…”
“No, I’m sorry.” She rubbed her brow. “You’re right I’m doing a bad job at this.” She set her rifle down and sat on the floor cross legged, burying her chin into the heels of her palms.
47 remained silent. Victoria began again: “When I moved here with her, I thought getting away from Chicago would mean having the chance at a fresh start. I wanted to be a normal girl; I really did. I took on Diana’s last name. I got good grades. I thought about throwing away the isotope necklace. Diana told me that I could hold onto it for as long as I wanted and to get rid of it when I felt ready.”
“But you never did,” he concluded. Victoria watched 47’s gaze drift from her eyes to the pendant around her neck. She nodded, clutching the necklace.
“No, I-I didn’t…” she agreed. “I just couldn’t shake the thought that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be a normal girl.” She swallowed hard, scared that 47 could read her mind, but already too far in deep to end there. “So anyway, then all my friends started dating boys, so I thought I had to start dating, so I went out with this guy—”
“—Michael,” 47 supplied.
“Yes… Michael,” she said, again alarmed that 47 seemed to know a great deal more than she ever realized about her adolescence.
“You know Diana hated Michael, right?”
“Yes, I know Diana hated Michael,” Victoria said exasperatedly, “we ALL hated Michael Dawson, okay?! But he was seventeen and drove a car, and my friends thought he was cool.”
“He was a thug.”
“He was a frat boy in way over his head,” Victoria corrected.
“But?”
Victoria shook her head. “But… Kissing boys felt weird to me. Kissing girls felt just as weird to me. It wasn’t fun. I didn’t hate it, I guess? But…I just felt…nothing.”
47 stared into his scope, but he had stopped firing. He seemed to be concentrating very hard, and it intimidated her to know he was concentrating on her. She had asked him to listen, but was frightened by him actually fulfilling her request.
“And then…” Victoria said with a sigh, cringing about what she was ready to tell him: “And then all my friends started getting their periods.”
47 shifted his weight from one foot to another. Victoria watched him warily, but he didn’t seem uncomfortable by the direction the conversation was headed. He looked at her, and he seemed to know. She took his silence as an invitation to continue to babble—old habits die hard.
“I cried to Diana when all the girls at school had their boobs come in, but she really fixated on the period thing. She didn’t say she was worried, but I could tell she was worried, ‘cause she got all fussy—I mean, you know how she gets—and she got really obsessive over my diet, had me eating all the time, at least five or six times a day, but when putting on a few pounds did nothing we went to see all kinds of experts.”
Victoria fiddled with her isotope pendant. “Well, of course the doctors asked about my family history, but they couldn’t know about that. So then she asked me how far I really wanted to go with this, told me that she could hire some Agency doctor to figure this out for me under the radar…but I got scared. Told her I didn’t want to know. She…she dropped it. Because I begged her to.”
47 said nothing.
“I never did get my period.” She stared at her hands. “Twenty years old and I still haven’t gotten a period.” Victoria felt her throat tighten. “Did Diana tell you about all that?” she asked, accusingly.
“No,” he said quietly. “She never told me.”
“Great! Glad one thing of my private life stayed private,” she said with a bitter laugh. “I just… I started to have all these fears. Like what if…what if the doctors made me this way? On purpose? What if they took my sex drive away from me? What good am I as a normal person if I can’t even love like a normal girl?”
Victoria shifted back to her feet, and realigned her sniper back on the crook of her elbow. 47 again remained silent.
“I know Diana wanted to protect me…but maybe I would have been better off just staying with the doctors—”
“—don’t say that,” 47 snapped, almost sounding angry. “She did what she thought was best for you.” His expression turned dark. “She was willing to die for you.”
Victoria swallowed hard, realizing she had crossed a line, but not sorry she felt that way. “You wanted to know what was on my mind. Well here it is: I was born to be a killer. And Diana is upset with that. And I’m frustrated.” She peered through her scope and fired another few rounds, this time making them all.